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Maybe it's because my dad, my grandpa, and my great-grandpa all were railroad men, or maybe it's just that I have a lick of common sense, but I don't understand how things like this can happen today. The person driving this vehicle had a kid inside. When will people wise up?

http://abcnews.go.com/WNN/video/suv-sla ... a-23172652

The two adults and the children in the Jeep were taken to a hospital, but are expected to be ok.

Whoever was driving needs to go to jail. I would think driving around a RR crossing gate which is down with lights flashing is the very definition of child endangerment.

LOL. What did they expect?!?! I don't know about jail, but loss of license, huge fines to fix the tram, etc all seems pretty reasonable. Stupid.

How did I know this would be the Houston light rail?

The thing opened around 2003, and there were maybe 100 car-rail collisions in the first year alone. Here is the recipe for how that can happen. Add equal amounts of all ingredients:

-A weird design that runs down the middle of busy streets, in some places actually running in what is otherwise a turn lane;
-An overwhelming car culture in a burgeoning city of millions of people, meaning open hostility to transit and pedestrians, and unfamiliarity of drivers in how to deal with either;
-A "screw you, I do what I want" attitude of Houston drivers that just has to be experienced to understand. Doing 85 in a middle lane. Crossing three lanes of traffic at the last second to make your exit. Driving across medians to escape a traffic backup. And, in this case, figuring the crossing guards are just a suggestion
-So very many dumb people. It's the only truly renewable resource.

We have so much train traffic near where I live that it causes you to look for other routes to get past the tracks. Commuter trains + freight = lots of traffic. What can happen - and has been known to kill people - is people get stuck on the track because there is a stoplight just beyond the track and traffic piles up. A school bus was hit like that years ago killing a bunch of kids. The other thing that has happened more than once is a freight train coming from one direction passes causing the gates to start to rise, and then before they completely rise here comes a commuter train coming at 60mph the other direction. Down they go again!

Because of those two situations, I do the following:

1. Never ever ever cross the track unless there is room on the other side.
2. Never ever ever cross the track until the gates are *completely* up and the lights off.

Both piss people off, I have felt like getting out of my car to punch people on number 2. It takes 5 seconds for those gates to go up, let them go up and make sure the lights are off. For one it's the law, for two it just makes sense.

I've been nervous about trains hitting cars since I was a kid because my grandmother was hit and sustained injuries that plagued her her entire life. My dad beat it into us to look and look again and then look a third time.

edit - but I've never seen anything quite so dumb as that video. Insanity.

How about the morons that do stop at the cross bucks, but pull up as closely as possible to the tracks? They are instant hamburger in the event of a derailment or if someone from behind accidentally bumps them into the oncoming train. What does it hurt to stop 20 or 30 feet away from the tracks?

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Brings to mind this famous PSA.

heyzeus wrote:How did I know this would be the Houston light rail?

The thing opened around 2003, and there were maybe 100 car-rail collisions in the first year alone. Here is the recipe for how that can happen. Add equal amounts of all ingredients:

-A weird design that runs down the middle of busy streets, in some places actually running in what is otherwise a turn lane;
-An overwhelming car culture in a burgeoning city of millions of people, meaning open hostility to transit and pedestrians, and unfamiliarity of drivers in how to deal with either;
-A "screw you, I do what I want" attitude of Houston drivers that just has to be experienced to understand. Doing 85 in a middle lane. Crossing three lanes of traffic at the last second to make your exit. Driving across medians to escape a traffic backup. And, in this case, figuring the crossing guards are just a suggestion
-So very many dumb people. It's the only truly renewable resource.

My brother-in-law designed that system.



I wonder what number of people killed or injured would be enough to keep people from stopping on tracks? Would they have to witness a collision? Not enough negative reinforcement.

I feel sorry for those children for having such a stupid parent who almost got them killed.

jim wrote:We have so much train traffic near where I live that it causes you to look for other routes to get past the tracks. Commuter trains + freight = lots of traffic. What can happen - and has been known to kill people - is people get stuck on the track because there is a stoplight just beyond the track and traffic piles up. A school bus was hit like that years ago killing a bunch of kids. The other thing that has happened more than once is a freight train coming from one direction passes causing the gates to start to rise, and then before they completely rise here comes a commuter train coming at 60mph the other direction. Down they go again!

Because of those two situations, I do the following:

1. Never ever ever cross the track unless there is room on the other side.

People are supposed to do this with normal intersections but there's plenty of asshats who don't follow the rule. You'd think adding a really, really large vehicle that can't stop on a dime to the equation would make those people think twice.

Here is that bus crash I was talking about: We had just moved up here and were living in Lake Zurich, basically the next town out was this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Fox_R ... _collision